


i would rather, i would rather go blind boy than to see you walk away from me

by goreds



Series: The Samuel Survives the Finale-verse [1]
Category: Frontier (TV 2016)
Genre: Amnesia, Blindness, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Memory Loss, and you can TOTALLY survive getting hit on the head that hard, being hit on the head can cause blindness i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22505074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreds/pseuds/goreds
Summary: Samuel Grant gets lucky. Extremely lucky. (So, for that matter, does Cobbs.)
Relationships: Samuel Grant/Cobbs Pond
Series: The Samuel Survives the Finale-verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671619
Kudos: 9





	i would rather, i would rather go blind boy than to see you walk away from me

When all is said and done, Samuel Grant is tossed into an alleyway in Montreal, left for dead by Clenna and Douglas. It seems an auspicious end, in their minds; after all, that’s what happened to both of the Carruthers. The blasted demon of a man is finally gone, head bashed in by Clenna’s quick thinking and surprisingly strong arm and accurate aim. Clenna and Douglas just hope that news of his death never reaches Cobbs, wherever he is. Clenna claims the mansion for her own, and all returns to normal.

Except no one ever says they found Samuel’s _corpse_. There are no stories in the local paper about the terror of the fur industry (both local and abroad) being found face down in a ditch.

Instead, Samuel gets extremely lucky, because that is, perhaps, all he had. His luck and his good wits, and even if _one_ had abandoned him, his luck was sure to see him through. He comes to in a hospital run by some nuns for the poor. They find him in that alleyway Clenna and Douglas tossed him into. The nuns bandage the wound on his head and wait to see if he would ever wake up.

And Samuel does wake up, but not whole. No, the Samuel who wakes up does not know his name is Samuel Grant; does not know who he is or how he found his way to Montreal; all he knows is what he can feel, because the blow Clenna struck took his sight along with his memory. He rips off the bandages and feels the barely-stitched together gash on his head, tracing a path from the top of his head down to his forehead, landing around his right eye.

He can’t see, of course, but he imagines he looks rather monstrous. Not that he knows that his past self would rather die than be horribly disfigured. Or, for that matter, blind. Or stuck in a hospital for the poor and disadvantaged.

Samuel might as well be back in Kentucky, recently orphaned, just a scared, lost little boy. But he remembers none of that. He doesn’t know to be angry; he doesn’t know to be scared. For all he knows, this is all he’s ever been. Just a poor, blind pauper, an invalid for the nuns to tend to and take care of.

If Samuel knows one thing, though, he knows this: he doesn’t like any of it. His current situation feels wrong and off, but he of course can’t prove it. To an outsider (and all of these nuns are outsiders), he’s just some poor man found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he’s a drunk who got into a fight. Maybe he found himself owing to the wrong collectors. Maybe he was just a passing traveler who drew the wrong sort of attention.

The nuns try and get answers out of him, but all they can draw out is an exhausted “I don’t know,” and then that repeated some more. Samuel must also assume he is an imbecile in addition to being an invalid. So, he waits for someone familiar to come and find him. He has, apparently, all the time in the world.

Samuel just doesn’t know that his former self ensured he only had one person left in the world.

* * *

Cobbs Pond returns to Montreal months after Samuel Grant finds himself awake, maimed and blind in the nuns’ charity hospital. Cobbs immediately goes to the mansion, because of course he does; it’s his home. When he gets there, he finds out pretty rudely that he’s not a welcome presence there any longer. He doesn’t even find out from Clenna; he finds out from a new servant who doesn’t recognize him, his name _or_ Samuel’s name, for that matter. Ms. Clenna is back in London, the servant says haughtily, before slamming the door in Cobbs’s face.

Maybe Samuel never came back from New York, Cobbs thinks. But no, he did get a (brief, curt) letter from Samuel saying he was coming back to Montreal. And Samuel wouldn’t just _give_ Clenna his mansion.

Cobbs scolds himself for ever leaving Samuel’s side, orders or no orders. None of this would be happening if Cobbs hadn’t just stayed. Cobbs fairly quickly realizes he’s spiraling, because of course he is. Samuel Grant is missing and knowing that Samuel would be there when Cobbs finally got back to Montreal was part of what kept him alive.

Even if Samuel was changed now. He had killed, and a man did not walk away from that fact easily. Especially not someone as delicate as Samuel.

Cobbs begins looking in all the usual spots, asking the usual people, but no one seems to know what’s happened to Samuel Grant. As far as most of their associates and acquaintances are concerned, Mr. Grant never returned from New York. Cobbs rather wishes Clenna was around, because if anyone knew where Samuel was, she would.

But she’s not. So, Cobbs endeavors to look in the spots where you wouldn’t expect a man like Samuel to be in, but you just never know, do you?

Days into search, he’s virtually exhausted all of his options. Except for for...the nunnery. And the hospital attached to the nunnery.

Cobbs does not like nuns. He does not like churches. He does not like hospitals.

He knows Samuel doesn’t like any of those things, either. But if the worst has happened--as he is beginning to suspect it has--this might have been Samuel’s last option.

The nun who greets him glares at his fur cap still atop his head, and while he would prefer to just glare back, he instead takes it off fairly quickly.

“Samuel Grant? We have no one here by that name.” The nun seems busy, and therefore gives the appearance she doesn’t care for whatever this fur trapper is looking for.

“Could I...look around in the hospital? Maybe he’s in no condition to give his name. Please.” Cobbs gives a small smile to the nun, as if to say, “I mean no harm.” Except, of course, if she doesn’t help, he very much will.

The nun just huffs. “Help yourself.”

Cobbs follows her into the first wing of the hospital. Mostly kids, in various states of maladies and injuries. The nun goes to tend to a crying child and waves Cobbs forward. “Just keep looking. I can’t hold your hand, sir.”

Cobbs wanders through the hospital. It’s mostly the poor of Montreal who occupies its wards and halls. How could Samuel have found himself in a place like this?

* * *

Samuel has grown used to the nunnery and the hospital. This is his life now. One of the sisters gave him a flimsy cane, another taught him the basics of living while blind. Sometimes he helps carry linens around, or he holds an iterant child’s hand while a bone gets set. He can’t shake the feeling that there’s something _very_ wrong about all of this.

And when he wakes up screaming, clutching the scar that runs down his face, he can never remember the dream that causes him to wake up like that. These rude awakenings are a regular occurrence at this point. So much so that he can hear the nuns gossiping sometimes about just what sort of life their blind stranger led before he ended up where he is. He wants to bark back that he’s _blind_ , not deaf, but they’ve been nice to him, for the most part.

That is all part of how Samuel found himself walking around the hospital, cane in front of him, guiding him, when he slams into someone who he assumes is a child not paying attention to where they’re going. Because of this, he refrains from dropping an oath.

But he can quickly tell that he’s bumped into a grown man, not a child.

A grown man who seems to recognize him. “Samuel?”

Probably just one of the nutters who also stumbles around the hospital.

“Samuel, it’s you!” The joy in the other man’s voice, however--there’s something strangely familiar about this. Before he can answer, he’s wrapped in a deep embrace.

“I beg your par--” but Samuel can’t get the rest of his interjection out. The strange man grabs Samuel’s hand and is almost trembling with excitement.

“Samuel, don’t you--” Samuel can feel air moving back and forth in front of his face. Ah. The man doesn’t know that he’s blind.

“You can stop swatting the air in front of you,” Samuel says gruffly, “I can’t see whatever it is you’re doing, so don’t bother.”

“Who did this to you?” The strange man’s voice has gone from joy to rage very quickly. Samuel wonders just how much this “Samuel” meant to this man.

“I don’t know. And I don’t know any Samuel. You must be mistaken.” Samuel leans down to grab his dropped cane.

“I’m not mistaken,” says the man simply. “You’re Samuel Grant. I’m Cobbs Pond. We’re...friends.”

_He chose that last word_ delicately, Samuel thinks to himself. _Also, what sort of name is Cobbs Pond?_

“I can tell this is all a shock to you.”

“It’s not, because I don’t believe a word of it.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Despair is trickling into the man’s... _Cobbs’s_ voice.

“Not anything before I got here. You seem to care for this ‘Samuel’ a great deal. I do hope you find him, Mr. Pond.” Samuel begins to walk away from Cobbs.

* * *

Cobbs can’t let Samuel get away, not now. He follows Samuel into a secluded corner of a side hallway (thank goodness for Catholics and their cloistered spaces) and nabs him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Samuel--or the man who looks an awful lot like him--protests getting snatched.

Cobbs looks the man who he thinks is Samuel up and down. His hair, usually short and neat, is long and unkempt. His clothes are a far cry from the elegant vests and coats he used to adorn himself with. And there’s a deep, angry scar coming from the top of his head down to his face, around one of his eyes. Samuel had a clear, steady gaze; and his gaze is still clear and steady, but now it stares off into the distance, which Cobbs curses himself for not noticing immediately.

“Well. Are you done staring at me? Convinced I’m not your... _friend_...yet? Just how special was this man to you, Mr. Pond?” Samuel raises his eyebrow, but his gaze is still fixed straight ahead. Cobbs realizes that he’ll probably never see Samuel look him in the eye again, and he muffles a strangled noise.

“Very special. He was very special.” Cobbs hopes that wasn’t too obvious. From the smile that spreads across Samuel’s face, it pretty clearly was.

“You know, if the nuns knew you were just walking around, shoving strange men into corners, I rather think they would be sweeping you out with a broom.” Samuel bites his lip, before part of his mouth quirks upwards.

Cobbs takes his chance. He looks around quickly--no nuns--and kisses Samuel ever so gently on his neck, just below one of his ears, right where he used to like it. In fairy tales, this would be the part where Samuel remembers everything.

But their life together was never a fairy tale.

* * *

Samuel likes the kiss, even if he isn’t sure what to make of it. Some part of him recognizes the kiss, and he has a flash of other stolen kisses--in an open, empty mansion, a greenhouse surrounded by flowers, a room above a tavern--but no real memories come back into his head.

Samuel feels Cobbs take his hand. “Would you...come back with me? Get you out of this...place. And we can talk.”

Samuel lets Cobbs hold his hand. “I’d do anything to get out of this hole, I’ll admit. Even go home with a strange man who openly kisses me in front of God and all his angels.”

Cobbs lets loose a strange giggle. “We’ve done worse.”

Cobbs takes Samuel to a room above a tavern somewhere deep in Montreal. Cobbs apologizes to Samuel; they had a mansion, once. Cobbs tells Samuel that he’ll take him back to New York, where surely, they can see a doctor who can figure out what’s going with his sight and his memory. New York is where they’re from, Cobbs says excitedly--well, sort of. Cobbs cuts Samuel’s hair and gives him a shave and just babbles on about their old life, and Samuel just listens quietly.

Samuel’s still not sure he believes any of this, but Cobbs is a nice man, and if all he has to do is be kissed occasionally and groomed and dressed, well, he can’t complain. The nuns certainly never cared this much. Cobbs is talking about someone named “Clenna” when Samuel interrupts him.

“Why did you leave?”

“W...what?”

“Clearly you care about me a great deal. What would compel you to leave?”

“You left first. And you ordered me not to go with you.”

“I _ordered_ you? Were you my servant or my lover?”

“Ah...in a way, both.” Cobbs sounds almost sheepish about it, but in a shrugging sort of way.

Samuel grasps the arms of his chair. “Why didn’t I want you to come with me?”

“Just a lovers’ quarrel.”

Samuel knows Cobbs is lying, but the man has suddenly grown so quiet and meek that he doesn’t want to push the matter. Maybe he was a real bastard in his past life. But Cobbs still loves him, so he can’t have been that bad.

“Tell me, is the scar...is it that bad?” Samuel feels the part of the scar that seems to divide his forehead into two parts. “The nuns wouldn’t tell me. Said it was vanity.”

“Now we have scars to match,” is all that Cobbs says.

“Oh? How many do you have?”

“A lot. Some very nasty people gave them to me.”

“I would say show them to me, but...well.” Samuel half-heartedly chuckles at his attempt at humor.

Cobbs does not seem to take the joke well. Samuel can hear the man kneeling in front of him, and Cobbs grabs both of Samuel’s hands, kissing them. Samuel can feel tears dropping onto his hands. Cobbs is crying, Samuel realizes. He’s almost touched.

“Don’t cry over me, Cobbs. As you said, we’ll go to New York, and we’ll figure out how to get me whole and healthy again.” Samuel feels for Cobbs’s face and begins to wipe away his tears. He can feel Cobbs rising over him, and Samuel gets the sense another kiss is coming.

Cobbs kisses him on the forehead this time, right on the scar and then trails down further, kissing him on the part of the scar that goes around his eye. And then, quietly: “I can stop, if you want.”

“N...no. Keep going.” Samuel himself almost feels like crying; Cobbs is surprisingly tender with him. No one’s ever been tender with him, at least not that he can remember. Cobbs gets Samuel to stand and sits down in the chair, and Samuel settles into Cobbs’s lap. Cobbs lands his kisses up and down Samuel’s jawline and nuzzles him under one of his ears, before kissing Samuel on the same spot as in the hospital.

Samuel gets more flashes, this time of making love in a tent, in shared quarters on a boat, of looking into bright blue eyes and feeling safe and calm, even though he was in the middle of a dangerous storm. Samuel feels for Cobbs’s face and the kissing stops. Samuel puts a hand over Cobbs’s lips and finds his way, haltingly, to the other man’s mouth. He kisses Cobbs, gently, feeling the other man’s stubbled lips against his own now smooth ones.

The two break apart. “Do you remember anything?” Cobbs sounds desperate.

“I remember feeling safe. With you. Just you.”

Cobbs kisses him again, and Samuel smiles at the other man’s exuberance. “It’s a start, then.”


End file.
